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Gabby Giffords, husband address Jared Lee Loughner in court

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband confronted the man who nearly took her life at an emotional court session on Thursday in Arizona.

Giffords’s husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, directly addressed Jared Lee Loughner about his actions in the shooting rampage that killed six people and wounded 13 others.

“By making death and producing tragedy, you sought to extinguish the beauty of life, to diminish potential, to strain love and to cancel ideas. You tried to create a world as dark and evil as your own,” Kelly said to Loughner. “Remember this: You failed.”

“Gabby and I are done thinking about you,” he said.

Giffords was seated in the courtroom and reportedly kept a fixed stare on Loughner as her husband read their statement. Loughner waived his right to address the court at the beginning of the hearing.

Kelly spoke alongside other people affected by the January 2011 shooting, which took place outside a Safeway store in Tucson, Ariz., as Giffords was meeting with constituents.

He talked of his wife’s struggle to recover from the gunshot that Loughner delivered to her head, noting that Giffords is partially blind and remains unable to fully use her right arm.

“Gabby would trade her own life for one you took on that day,” Kelly said. “Every day is a continuous struggle to do the things she was once so very good at.”

“You may have put a bullet through her head,” Kelly said, “but you haven’t put a dent in her spirit.”

What a wonderful, although doubtless unintentional, attack on the culture of death more broadly—mutatis mutandis that’s a pro-life banner right there. “By making death and producing tragedy, you sought to extinguish the beauty of life, to diminish potential, to strain love and to cancel ideas. You tried to create a world as dark and evil as your own. You will fail.”